I grew up a Yankee fan, I favor Pitchers whenever possible, I am a stathead, and my dream job is to be a GM for an MLB franchise. In the summer, I go to MLB games and catch baseballs. In the winter, I write about what teams are doing to get better or worse. I try to be positive and unbiased in my writing, but that isn't always possible when evaluating teams truthfully.

Results tagged ‘ autograph ’

Seeing how all I saw was rain in the forecast and didn’t know where I would be staying for the night the morning of this game, I seriously contemplated just not going to this game. And despite the good times that were had as a result of going to this game, the frustration that came out of it kind of still has me wishing I wouldn’t have gone.

When I got to Oriole Park at Camden Yards, this was the scene on the field:

But it actually wasn’t surprising at all. I had come from Washington that morning, and in walking from the train station in Baltimore to OPACY, it felt like I was in a monsoon. I really couldn’t believe how hard it was raining. It was actually raining so hard that some streets had turned into two-foot-deep rivers. It was seriously crazy. Even crazier was that it pretty much completely stopped right when I thought what I was doing by walking to the ballpark through this was insane and entered a 7-Eleven. I was left absolutely drenched, so I assume so too was the field. As I got in, though, there were a few Angels warming up down the left field line, so when I got over there, I asked who I believe was Hank Conger for the ball, and he asked me who my favorite player on the Angels was. I thought it was one of those situations where I was supposed to say it was him, but with my uncertainty at the time that it was Conger at the time, I responded with, “You, of course.” But when he asked, “Trout?” I realized that it was because a bunch of people were coming down from New Jersey to watch Mike Trout play, and that Conger was legitimately asking. So as he tossed me the ball, I gave him my legitimate answer that Ernesto Frieri was my favorite Angel:

You can kind of see Conger behind the Orioles grounds crew, but he was jogging off as he tossed me the ball. I then got Ryan Madson’s autograph and tried to help Avi Miller get Ernesto Frieri to toss us a baseball/take a picture with him and another friend/OPACY regular, Zevi. But in the time that Frieri was throwing, I stood back and tried to get a ball form one of the new Angels throwing pairs:

I think I could have, but C.J. Wilson apparently melts in the rain and ran inside the clubhouse every time it even started drizzling, so his catch session with Ernesto Frieri took forever, and he actually played catch with a couple of kids in the front row. I’ll upload the footage to YouTube if enough of you guys want to see it, but I really don’t feel like doing it otherwise. He also tossed about seven baseballs into the stands during this catch session–which I found really nice. Unfortunately, I was pretty far away from him at most times, so none of them came my way.

Tommy Hanson came out to play catch with Steve Soliz after all of these guys finished their catch sessions. I was waving my arms to get his attention from about fifteen rows deep, since there were a ton of fans in the first two rows. And when Hanson was done throwing, he tossed me the ball from about thirty feet away:

He then motioned for me to toss the ball back to him. I couldn’t tell if he was serious, so I started to pull the ball out of my glove, but this was also my lefty glove. That and the fact that he was quite a ways away at that point made me very hesitant to throw the ball back to him. I was much more likely to hit the back of the head of one of the fans in the front row than I was to get the ball back to Hanson himself. Thankfully, he showed that he was joking and waved me off, so I kept the ball.

And when I say the front rows were packed, I actually do mean they were packed. Here’s a picture I took pretty much right after I got the ball from Hanson when I walked into the outfield:

Seeing that, I’m really surprised I got the ball from Hanson. But the reason I was headed towards the outfield is that I had seen a giant group of people sitting in the outfield ever since the seating bowl opened up to the public and wanted to get a picture of them:

I never confirmed this, but given the fact that they went right to their seats, the high percentage of Angels shirts amongst the group, and the even higher percentage of those shirts that had a 27 on the back of them, I’d say this was a large group of people who made the trip from Melville New Jersey in order to see their hometown hero, Mike Trout play in this series.

Anyway, nothing else happened during the game except for me finding this random Nationals program in the seats:

(Daheck?) This was on my way to the flag court where I would spend the first five innings of the game. But past the point that I saw this program, there was only one word to describe my day: frustration. I was out in the flag court with Alex Kopp, whose house I would be staying at for this trip to Baltimore. In the third inning, we were sitting in the wheelchair section just to the center field side of the flag court, talking about something, when Mike Trout hit a high fly ball to right field. We were slow to react since we were both sitting down talking to each other. In fact, it wasn’t until a little into when the camera cuts to the flag court in the video that you can even see Alex moving, and I was even slower to start moving because I didn’t think the ball was going to be a home run. But then the ball just kept carrying and carrying. Alex went straight at where the ball was landing, but knowing it was my only shot, I headed out onto Eutaw Street in case the ball bounced out there. Turns out I would/should have, but it caught one of the fences between the flag court and Eutaw, so it stopped right there. That was it for my shot. Alex meanwhile, was blocked by a person, so he couldn’t reach down to pick the ball up and a kid got it. It was frustrating because I knew from watching him in previous batting practices that Trout could hit the ball out to the opposite field, but we both weren’t prepared, and had we been in position, it would have been a semi-easy snag for either of us.

But not as easy a snag as the second ball that frustrated me. In the sixth inning, rain started pouring again, so I headed to the area behind home plate to see if I could get a ball from home plate umpire Joe West if the game was delayed:

While I was down there, Josh Hamilton hit a foul ball right over my head that went into the second deck. As soon as it did, a voice in my head told me that I should go and position myself in case there was a rebound off the second level, but the other part of me ignored it and just watched as the ball headed up there and bounced three rows below where I thought I should have been positioning myself. Hamilton then added insult to injury by hitting a home run that same at-bat just ten feet from where I usually stand in the flag court that would have probably been a semi-easy snag for me. And if that wasn’t enough, an usher forced me to get away from the umpire tunnel right as the game was being delayed, so I missed my opportunity to get a ball from the umpire because of him.

I then spent most of the rain delay in the club level with these cool people:

I apologize in advance for the fuzziness of my picture from now on as that’s how the water affected my phone’s camera. But anyway, those people,left to right, are:

I stayed there for what I’d say was about an hour, but since he had to get up at 6 o’clock the next morning, Alex really wanted to leave the game. And since I was staying with him, still didn’t know where the house was, and the warning track was looking like a lake, we agreed to leave, and I would come back and exchange an extra ticket he had for a later game to get back in if they resumed play after we left.

Long story short: it was announced pretty much as we got back to Alex’s house that the game would resume at 11:00, I headed to the stadium right as I heard this, I found out the ticket offices where I would have exchanged the ticket to get back in was closed, I also found out that the only way to get in through buying a ticket was to pay $10 cash–which I didn’t have, I wandered outside Camden Yards trying to find a way to get in for probably over two hours because I had left my glove and phone charger with Avi and Tim and needed to get them, I watched from the gate behind the Oriole Park bullpens as the Orioles closed the game out:

I got my glove from Avi, I found out that Tim had gotten four toss-up after the game because of the general lack of people and nice people at the bullpen who hooked him up, and I headed back to Alex’s place which I hoped I could find my way to again even though I was now walking there after midnight. Like I said, frustrating.

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Ballhawking Sites

Cook & Sons' Baseball Adventures
Although most ballhawking blogs are, Todd Cook’s narrative of his and his sons’ adventures going to ballparks is the closest thing there is to a father-son-baseball written reality show.

Hit Tracker
An amazing tool that was responsible for my success at Yankee Stadium in 2010. See Season end review (Nov, 1, 2010) if you want to see the difference @ Yankee Stadium.

My Game Balls
The ballhawking community’s mode of communication and competetion

My mygameballs.com account
Specifically *my* account on mygameballs.com which has much more detailed stats than I have time to write about

Plouffe's New Hairdo
One of my new Minnesota friends, Tony Voda’s ballhawking/Twins/music-in-the-offseason-but-sometimes-during-the-season-too blog.

Steel City Ballhawk
A blog written by elite ballhawk, Nick Pelescak, about all of the games he attends, which is a ton since he is a season ticket holder at PNC Park.

The Ballhawker
The ballhawking blog of a fellow New York ballhawk, Chris Hernandez.

Zack Hample (The Baseball Collector)
Now If you are reading this blog there is a .00009 % chance that you haven’t visited this blog, but as a service to the reason this blog exists I want to have Zack add that .00009% to his viewership. It is the least I can do.

MLBlogs I Recommend and Follow

Ballparks on a Budget
Ever want to go to a baseball game outside of your local team but don’t want to empty the bank? Alicia Barnhart’s your girl with Ballparks on a Budget. She should know how to spend wisely in going to games because, well, she’s been to them all. Just last

Dodger Blue World
Just a great blog written by dedicated Dodger super-fan Emma Amaya.

Minoring In Baseball
A blog written by the father of just a family who are all fans of the West Michigan Whitecaps who is just a great guy in general: Michael David.

MLB.com Blogs Central
As the title kind of suggests, this blog is pretty much the center of the MLBlogs unvierse. It apply sometimes goes by the moniker: “MLBlogosphere”

The Ballpark Guide
A MUST-read for any MiLB afficionados, or even many MLB fans. Malcolm MacMillan goes to different ballparks all over and details his visit on the blog and writes tips for anyone going to that ballpark on his website (which can be found on the blog’s homep

The Next White Sox GM
If you were a baseball mind growing up, you may have gotten a comment from an elder female family member (usually grandma) saying, “You should be the one to run the team with all the knowledge you’ve got about baseball.” Well, here’s a kid who might just

The Unbiased MLB Fan
Matt Huddleston doesn’t root for the teams; he roots for the players. I wish I could say more, but I suspect any other explanation of his blog would be a multi-centennial-word ordeal.

Three Up, Three Down
One would assume not getting into the MLB Fan Cave is a sad experience. (Well, at least I would; I’ve never been old enough to apply.) However, this group of fans turned that usually-sad experience and turned it into a great blog where there are just a sl

MLBlogs I Recommend

Observing Baseball Classics

"The Baseball" Book Review
In this entry I reviewed/summarized the entirety of the book “The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches” written by Zack Hample.

10/19/10 ALCS: Yankee Stadium
Sure I had no clue how to write it, but this was my first ballhawking entry ever and my only of 2010, so it falls under the category “classic”

Ballhawk Charities 2012
Where I went over the four ballhawk charities I had heard of at the beginning of the season as a way of helping them out by getting the word out.

Case Study on Morality in Baseball
A research paper I did way back in the summer of 2010. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I wrote back then anymore, but it does add an interesting perspective to things especially in today’s steroid talk.

Collected Baseball Knick-knacks
Quite simply: pretty much everything baseball-related that I had collected and managed to keep ahold of as of November, 20, 2011.

Dissecting/Deconstructing Baseballs
I’ve taken apart several baseballs before, and it was fun, so I decided to make a video of me taking apart a baseball and adding tips for other people to do so too.

Favorite MLB Players
I did probably one of my funner videos on who my favorite players were from the present day, when I first started watching baseball, and my favorite player that I never saw play at all.

Houlihan Park Tour and Snagging Analysis
This is my high school, Fordham Prep,’s home field, which being the manager of the varsity team for three years, I spent proabably more games here than at any other baseball field. So when I returned to my high school for a day, I took a quick tour of the

Observing Baseball Trivia
See the description of the link two links above, but modify it slightly so it fits this entry’s title.

Pitching Aces in the Playoffs
My first ever “real” entry that I ever wrote back on the surplus of star pitchers in the 2010 playoffs. It was pretty good considering I knew nothing about blogging, or writing in general for that matter.

Pure Genius
This is just me explaining how the Phillies got three aces of pitchers; nothing fancy. But it was me showing my first flash of general manager mind to the world, so that’s why I like it.

Sabermetrics (the explanation)
This was me explaining some simple sabermetric statistics for the people of the world who have heard of the stats but never really knew what significance they had/have over the more common metrics. I take pride in this because it can potentially educate s

Survey of Adults Perception of Baseball
I surveyed a bunch of my teacher as to which baseball player was there favorite; both in and outside of New York. It’s a bit more complex than that, but the only way to understand is to read the entry.

Tour Target Field in the Snow
Target Field is in Minnesota, so it only felt fitting that I should take at least one day to tour it while it was buried in the snow. And that’s what this entry was: a video of me going around Target Field while it was snowing and there was a ton of snow

Weird Observing Baseball Facts and Records
I may yet do this every year…and it would then become its own link category–but for the meantime–there is only one set of Observing Baseball Facts and Records, so it definitely goes under “Observing Baseball Classics”.

Blast from the Baseball Past

8/24/08 Dodgers at Phillies: Citizens Bank Park
My second ever game to CBP that ended with Pedro Feliz hitting a three-run walk-off home run while my dad and I were in the car because we had to catch a flight to Detroit seven hours later that same day in New York.

Obsevers of Baseball

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